Pedal Noise Question

It’s been a long time since I played an acoustic piano, but I played them (not professionally) for twenty-some years when I was younger.

I don’t remember ever noticing the pedal noise when playing an acoustic piano. It’s there, but it’s just not something that requires your attention. At least I can’t recall ever adapting my playing style to consider it. What noise there is will vary from one piano to another, but it’s just not something you need to consider. It doesn’t project like the sound from the sounding board, so even if you hear it as a player, the audience probably won’t. (I’m excluding intentional, weird effects that you can produce by doing something like fast releasing and reapplying the pedal to make the dampers strike the strings. I notice Pianoteq doesn’t replicate that. Which is OK by me: I never saw any actual use for it.)

I would say that being in the habit of “flooring” the pedal unless you really want to half-pedal is important. Different pianos will respond differently to that, but generally you want to be all the way down except for specific cases (which I think only occur in advanced classical repertoire — I never ran into them) where something else is intended, so you don’t get a muffled, early decay. Equally important is to get your foot all the damn way up when you go up, because different pianos will respond differently to that, too, some failing to mute notes all the way, especially if you repedal quickly and don’t lift your foot high enough.

Acoustic pianos are like automobiles. They’re all roughly alike, but you have to learn how each one handles and adapt accordingly. There are still habits that serve you well (e.g., in a car, not resting your foot on the brake, even if the particular car you’re driving at the moment appears to tolerate that).

You will be happy to note that PianoTeq has half pedaling in the range 0-127 - more than an acoustic!

Also there is the ability to turn up or down the pedal noises - the swooshing you describe - to your liking.

If you haven't already, try the demo. You will be able to hear for yourself the level of modelled authenticity and determine if PianoTeq is for you.

PS
As a user of PianoTeq I find it to be better than the internal sounds of my digital piano and a pleasure to play. It is more exciting than an out-of-tune (no matter how slight this may be) acoustic and offers greater flexibility.

Hope that helps???

PPS
On the subject of how to use the pedal - I would strongly advise you to allow your teacher to guide you. If, on the other hand you are teaching yourself, then I would suggest you don't thump any part of the piano, be it keys or pedals. I normally play the notes to be sustained first and then gently lower the pedal to sustain them. You never see concert pianists stamping on the pedals - I think they would be immediately dismissed!!! LOL

All true and thanks for correcting me! I don't think my feet are capable of infinitesimally small adjustments when it comes to pedalling, though - LOL

Piano technician here... the noise you hear from the pedals is present to a degree in acoustic instruments. The 'whoosh' sound is the lower wedge dampers pulling from between the strings on lift and the 'thump' is the damper rail in uprights and damper tray on grand pianos returning to rest with the pedal lift. You don't hear much of this in an upright as it is enclosed inside the piano case, it's much more prominent in grand pianos was the dampers are open just behind the music rack.

Digital pianos have been adding these noises as improvements in their piano sound where we as piano technicians have been trying to minimize them by trimming damper felt and cushioning the pedal return and trapwork to minimize the 'thump' on release. Also, excessive damper 'thump' on release can be a result of poor pedal technique where the pedal is not controlled on release but freely allowed to smack back to rest position. I've had to educate some of my piano service clients who were complaining about pedal thump when I saw them tapping the pedal without their heel on the floor for control.

In my Pro version of Pianoteq there is the option to increase or eliminate the damper noise entirely.

I would not hesitate to lower the pedal and key noise levels if they bother you; I do. As pointed out, piano technician's work to minimize these noises, and I would wager Mr. Steinway would have loved to be able to eliminate them completely.

Realism aside, the one reason to leave them at higher level would be that your aversion to them will help teach you to pedal more finesse.

That's quite a different statement from "Only a few continuous pedals are capable of transmitting the whole range." I would agree the mechanical quality of the pedal is important for the linearity and reproducibility of the response, but I would not necessarily include Fatar in my personal list of "reputable manufactuers" (at least not anywhere near the top) and it's only one example, not really supporting the idea that "only a few" are capable.

FWIW, I have a DP-10 that's been working perfectly for the last 10 years or so. It's still solid, smooth and quiet. Using it with an RD-700NX, if I deliberately stroke the pedal very slowly, I can get all the possible values in as linear a fashion as my muscle control can manage with no jitter or discontinuities. I don't know about other keyboards, but the RD-700 produces pedal messages at a maximum rate of 1 every 8ms So in practice a typical full pedal stroke in either direction taking 80-100ms generates only 10-13 messages with steps of 10-13 values. Even if a keyboard generated sustain messages every millisecond, hogging the MIDI 1.0 bandwidth, you would typically see some skipped values simply because there isn't time to send them all. So there's just no point in having higher resolution or super-precise position measurement.

I know Fatar has been in the business for a long time and supplies keybeds/actions to many manufacturers, but the serious DP manufacturers all build their own actions for a reason. I had an Alesis QS-8 with a weighted Fatar action. It was heavy. sticky and uneven and got noticably worse over a period of years. I realize this is just one data point from a long time ago and the QS-8 was a fairly budget-minded keyboard, but there you have it; not one of my personal favorite manufacturers.

I also replaced the original pedal on my VPC1 and replaced it with the Roland pedal and it was much better , but still problematic for playing Ravel or Debussy work as too imprecise . I also noticed as you mention a lot of  data being sent when the pedal is fully pressed which I got rid off by adjusting the pedal curve , but it looks like a design issue as opposed to be a feature . I recently acquired an acoustic grand and there is indeed a big difference when the piano is well prepared. I  have heard many reviews praising the Kawai pedal with optical sensors , so I would be inclined to think it is indeed a much better pedal as it replaced the old pedal in the new DP line and I would probably have bought it if I hadn’t switched to acoustic .